While living in many ways like a typical American child, a young Native American also learns about his people's history and traditions. As shown in the many large color photos, Timmy Roybal observes his mother working both as a weaver and as a computer programmer, his aunt as a potter, his uncle as a carver, and other adults doing various jobs. Timmy's father teaches him their traditions and takes him to see Pueblo treasures at the museum in Santa Fe where he is curator. Timmy also enters into tribal dance ceremonies (copiously illustrated). Timmy's life at San Ildefonso Pueblo—with a comfortable home, loving parents, a computer to use at school, and Little League—the hardships that a majority of Native Americans face. Still, Timmy is pleasant and appealing, while his life is depicted as varied and interesting. An authentic glimpse of the positive side of Pueblo life. (Biography. 7-11)
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-525-65060-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1991
Frederick Law Olmsted was born in Hartford, Conn., in 1822. He was an intelligent and ambitious man whose many interests made it hard for him to settle on a career. Although his family was supportive and understanding, it was also large, and Olmsted's father could not afford to bankroll his eldest son forever. So Olmsted tried a number of different kinds of work: His love of nature caused him to take up farming; his concern for the urban poor and for black slaves led him to a brief career in writing; his administrative skills won him an appointment with the US Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. Olmsted was good, and occasionally successful, at these pursuits, but he had trouble finding the field—landscape architecture—that combined his many interests because it did not yet exist. (Olmsted and his sometime partner, Calvert Vaux, coined the term.) When New York City planned to create a public park, Olmsted was hired first as superintendent of the project and then architect-in-chief, after he and Vaux won first prize for their park design. Creating the park was a long and taxing job, but Olmsted loved it. Central Park today looks very much like Olmsted and Vaux's design. Olmsted went on to create more public parks and restore and preserve natural landscapes, like Niagara Falls. He died in 1903. Dunlap's (Aldo Leopold, not reviewed) biography is absorbing and readable. (Biography. 8-11)
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-87614-824-0
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The lives of 30 great American writers are outlined here in clear, informative biographies from the Fabers (Birth of a Nation, 1989, etc.). The foreword describes the method used for choosing the featured writersno living authors were included, every recipient of the Nobel Prize wasand offers a small apology for coming up with so many dead white males. It would be hard to quibble with most of the choices, which include all the venerables from James Fenimore Cooper to Tennessee Williams, with a couple of token children's book authors thrown in. The bios themselves are short but complete, always engaging and occasionally sparkling. Readers will enjoy the consternation of the Wharton family friends who worried that young Edith was too clever, and knowing that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned the rhyme that begins, ``There was a little girl/Who had a little curl/Right in the middle of her forehead.'' Although not as witty and unconventional as Kathleen Krull's Lives of the Writers (1994), this is a solid contribution to the Great Lives series. (b&w photos, not seen; bibliography, further reading) (Biography. 9-11)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-19448-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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